Aiming at the computer-aided design market, Lightning Computers Inc, San Francisco has launched a 50MHz Intel Corp 80486 personal computer claimed to be capable of running processor-intensive MS-DOS applications at 22 MIPS, faster than any other personal computer on the market. There is officially as yet no such thing as a 50MHz 80486, and in order to prevent the chip burning up, Lightning has included a Peltier-effect microprocessor-controlled cooling module that lowers operating CPU temperatures to between 0oC and 4oC. The Lightning 486/50 speeds CPU, graphics, numeric and disk-intensive operations by using separate processors to handle each function. Graphics are accelerated with Vermont Microsystems Inc’s X/Series M16 or M256 graphic co-processors combining a proprietary graphics-drawing ASIC, 1.2Mb of fast video RAM and 25 MFLOPS AT&T Co 32C signal processor. Disk-intensive tasks are accelerated by a 4Mb to 16Mb cache and a 16-bit Zilog Z280 CPU – 16-bit version of the Z80 that offloads input-output from the 80486 and handles reads and writes in the background. It has 4Mb of 60ns RAM standard, expandable to 32Mb on the motherboard; 20ns static RAM cache expandable from 64Kb to 512Kb for both reads and writes; and a 50MHz VLSI chip set for extensive control over system architecture, including bus speeds from 8MHz to 24MHz, DMA clock speed and wait states; prices for complete systems go from $9,755 to $30,000.
